Pinwheels Celebrate Peace at The Steward School

To celebrate the International Day of Peace last month, students at The Steward School planted more than 200 pinwheels carrying messages of peace in their own celebration of “Whirled Peace.”

Their pinwheels also helped renew ties with several other Richmond-area schools. As part of the Dr. Martin Luther King Day celebration in January 2010, Steward students visited Fairfield Court Elementary School and Woodville Elementary School to help beautify their campuses by painting murals, refurbishing teacher lounges, helping clean desks and windows and to carry out simple acts of service.

To continue relationships with those schools, Steward art teachers Lynn Zinder, Cindy Grissom and Rugene Paulette invited students at the elementary schools to take part in Steward’s “Whirled Peace Day.”

Fairfield’s Assistant Principal, Ellena Ebanks, participated in the day’s festivities, spoke about the pinwheels made by Fairfield students, and thanked Steward students for their service. Students in grades three through five at Woodville Elementary made pinwheels to be displayed at their school’s Parent Night.

“You can’t promote peace unless you are happy with yourself,” Zinder told her students, who took her cue and decorated the pinwheels, all of which contained peaceful sentiments. Among them were Dr. Martin Luther King’s statement, “We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means,” and a quotation from an eight-year-old child, “Peace is people talking together with a heart between them.”

Steward students shared their peaceful hearts with Mrs. Ebanks and the entire student body of the Anna Julia Cooper Episcopal School and its Headmaster, Mike Maruca, (also former head of middle school at The Steward School) during the “Whirled Peace Day” festivities. Visiting middle school students worked with Steward middle schoolers to make larger pinwheels that will be taken back to Anna Julia Cooper School. After the mornings’ program, all of the pinwheels were planted in the shape of a large peace sign on the front lawn of the Steward School campus.

Pinwheels for Peace is an art installation project started in 2005 by two Florida art teachers.

Students from 22 Henrico County elementary schools will take to the baseball field Oct. 18 and learn how to field, hit and run the bases. The students will take part in Challenger Day, an annual event at the Tuckahoe Park Baseball Complex that introduces students with significant disabilities to the fundamentals of baseball. The students will also enjoy games, an art project, roaming mascots and a picnic lunch. > Read more.

Eisenman & Associates, Inc. employee Tracie Grady recently was named the 2017 Virginia Business Meeting Planner of the Year. Grady was chosen by a committee of industry leaders among 19 nominees. The award is a partnership between Virginia Business magazine and the Virginia Society of Association Executives. Its goal is to recognize the unsung hero of the association, non-profit, and business world, the professional meeting planner. Grady works with clients in a number of areas, including membership management, publication design, membership directories and convention/tradeshow programs. She has worked in the association industry, primarily focused on meeting planning, for more than 20 years. She is a graduate of VCU. Eisenman & Associates, Inc. is an association management and meetings consulting company. > Read more.

The Henrico County Planning Department will hold a workshop Thursday, Oct. 19 for residents and other members of the public to provide additional input for a study of the Route 5 corridor and Marion Hill areas.

The workshop will be held from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at John Rolfe Middle School, 6901 Messer Road. The meeting will include an overview of community input received so far and an explanation of how it is reflected in the study’s draft goals and objectives. > Read more.

Nominations are open for the 2017-18 REB Awards for Distinguished Educational Leadership, The Community Foundation’s yearly awards that identify, recognize and support leadership excellence in the Richmond area.

Honorees receive an unrestricted $7,500 cash grant, and $7,500 to be used for school initiatives. Nominees can be principals from public schools in Henrico, Chesterfield and Hanover counties and the city of Richmond who have served in their current positions for at least three years. > Read more.

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The Shady Grove Coffeehouse at the Unitarian Universalist Community Church, 11105 Cauthorne Rd. in Glen Allen, continues its 17th season with The Company Store Band at 8 p.m. The foursome combines fiddle melodies from Virginia’s Appalachians, tight harmonies from Kentucky’s bluegrass and moving spirituals from the Carolina hills. Featuring Peg Andrae on guitar, Kate Conn on banjo, Don Golladay on bass and Paul Muller on fiddle. Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door; teens are admitted at half price and children age 12 and under are free. Net proceeds benefit UUCC. For details, call 323-4288 or visit http://www.shadygrovecoffeehouse.com.
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